Rogue
Justice,
a book immensely laudable for its cohesiveness and lucidity, offers
an exceedingly compelling rendition of the American judicial and
political landscape under the Bush administration post 9/11. Though
a little repetitive at times, Greenberg
successfully
composed
solid arguments
for the way “the institutions of justice, caught up in the war on
terror, have done rogue.” She
offered a rather captivating
navigation
through
“the smoke of political posturing,” and exploration
of “the
White House's intransigence and its extravagant claims about wartime
powers.”

Greenberg
substantiated the
phenomenon of “rogue justice” with an excellent survey of
pertinent
legislations. The author highlighted
the USA PATRIOT Act, the Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism Act of 2001, the
act which
“privileged intelligence collection over constitutional
protections,” and dramatically reduced the protections of the
Fourth Amendment. The obliteration of the “FISA wall”—the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—was
said to have led
to “legalized warrantless surveillance,” and which
expunged
barriers between national security investigations and criminal
investigations.

The
author
keenly underscored
a “particularly Orwellian twist” embedded in the FISA Amendments
Act (FAA) which ominously
authorized
“spying even as it forbade it;” Section 702 of the FAA also
notably
established the Protect America Act's (PAA) alarmingly lowered bar in
identifying
surveillance targets. The
“abrogation of rights” was
even officially established
as “the law of the land” with
the
passage of the Military Commissions Act (MCA). Signing into law the
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) on September 18, 2001,
President Bush went
to the extent of granting
himself relatively
boundless
power and right to use “all necessary force and appropriate force”
against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks and against those who
“harbored such organizations or persons.”

Fascinatingly,
the
book focused considerable
limelight on Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo; he
whosignificantly
fortified the
practice of “rogue justice”
as he repeatedly
fabricated “constitutional cover for an abridgment of civil
liberties unprecedented in American history.” In legally
justifying
Stellar Wind—the President's Surveillance Program by the National
Security Agency (NSA)—Yoo argued in his memo that merely “the
nature and extent of the emergency” post 9/11 indicates that any
“attempts to limit presidential power” to be “an
unconstitutional infringement on the President's Article II
authorities.” Regarding
torture, Yoo imprudently
seized the “opportunity
to extend his, and the rest of the War Council's, radical
reinterpretation of American law,” no
matter how inhumane.

An
advocate of executive power, and probably fervidly so, Yoo's
controversial arguments are shown
to be consistently
outrageous. Sweeping
statements would
be written, including “a
warrant is not required for all government searches,” or
unsubstantiated
and
dubious claims
such
as
“a warrantless search can be constitutional.” Yoo was also
involved in drafting a new policy “decreeing that detainees in the
war on terror would be held in military custody and tried—if they
were to be tried at all—by military courts.”

Responsible
for the new legal designations of “enemy combatants,” and
“unlawful combatants,” Yoo
conspired for the United States to “avoid the strictures of the
Geneva Conventions applicable to armed conflict” as he unsparingly
disallowed detainees the entitlement to “international protections
guaranteed to prisoners by the laws of war”—of “humane
treatment, freedom from humiliating and degrading treatment,” and
more.

Greenberg
judiciously and shrewdly filled the book with commentary and analyses
that reasonably
and effectively
reinforce her premise, whilst
doubling as a helpful
guide
for readers. Sheobserved
the government's chilling attempts to turn its “rogue programs”
into “officially sanctioned policy” with the publication of
“polished” memos that “increased confidence that any attempt to
prosecute interrogators or officials for war crimes would fail.”
“The rogue elements within the White House, and especially within
the Department of Justice” conveniently
avoided
a “full and public reckoning” with the settlement for a plea deal
in the John Walker Lindh case; it strategically “prevented the
systematic dismantling of constitutional protections from coming to
light at trial,” whilst retaining “firsthand stories of prisoner
abuse, coercive interrogation, and disregard for due process” out
of the public record.

The
author boldly accentuated the
power-hungry White
House as she fittingly drew
attention to Paul Clement—the government's leading defender in
9/11-related litigation—who
made preposterous
claims
such asthe
president's entitlement to “violate
criminal law, the law of war, the Eight Amendment, and various
international accords and treaties if he thought it was necessary.”
The government's
positions were laden with “deep
antidemocratic undertones;” itrepeatedly
urged
the court to defer to the executive branch, and
“to
knowingly relinquish its prerogative to judge whether the law
demanded it to restrain the president,” and
even claiming the “rule of law, restraints on sovereign power,”
and “an independent judiciary” to be “now
a liability.”

In
illustrating
blatant
instances of the abuse of power, “a new prosecutorial model in
terrorism cases” was reported to be employed, at
times
successfully, especially in cases weakened by poor evidence or
mistreatment; the prosecutors would simply
“allege
a conspiracy with Al Qaeda,” or “invoke the name of Osama bin
Laden.” On a
ludicrous note, the White House was even said to be “willing to
make a mockery of the judicial branch of government” in an attempt
“to protect its bid for executive power,” or even to
“intentionally moot” a case in a manner that would turn the whole
proceeding into a “farce.”

Greenberg
dexterously delineated
resistance towardthe
unchecked
executive
power by notably
chronicling
the setbacks and triumphs of certain
parties, most
prominently
the ACLU. The author detailed
the multiple lawsuits the ACLU filed—a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) order demanding the release of
documents relevant to domestic spying, and relatedstruggles
toward satisfying the standing doctrine; a complaint accusing
the FAA to be in violation of
the First and Fourth Amendments, and “the principle of separation
of powers” in Amnesty
v. Clapper;
and a civil suit against Jeppesen Dataplan, an aviation and marine
support company allegedly involved in flying detainees to black
sites.

Jack
Goldsmith was
the man credited for
the earliest
attempts to rescind John Yoo's torture memos. He
perceived Yoo's
legal memos that guided counterterrorism policy to be “deeply
flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting
extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President,”
and
“designed
to confer immunity for bad acts.”

Criticisms
toward the executive were aplenty: “the President apparently
believes his power to torture is plenary;” the Patriot Act's
issuance of “blank warrants” posed
a
“threat to civil liberties;” Stellar Wind was referred to as a
“dragnet surveillance;” the Combatant Status Review Tribunals
(CSRTs) was accused by an ex-tribunal member to be “an irremediable
sham;” the unavailability for one to access “the right to
challenge one's detention” made the CSRTs grossly
ineligible
as “an adequate substitute” for a habeas court; and the Supreme
Court ruling that in the absence of authorization by the Congress,
the president had thus
set up military commissions in
an illegal manner.

The
author finely
traced the operation of “rogue justice” as the Bush
administration gave way to the Obama Presidency. The
notorious whistleblower Edward Snowden was
depicted—one
charged
and accused of “theft of government property, unauthorized
communication of national defense information, and giving classified
information to an unauthorized person;” he
who
revealed classified documents which escalated public outcry over the
“incontrovertible evidence of mass collection of both metadata and
content.” Particularly
enlightening was the outlining of efforts
committed
by
the Obama administration toward greater alignment to the
Constitution, increased transparency, and
otherwise; the revoking of the government's metadata-collection
program—Section 215 bulk telephone records program—, the public
release of the Senate's torture report and the Report
on the President's Surveillance Program,
and
more.

Discussion
of the
legal
cases and trials in the book were especially
interesting. The ruling
of the Ghailani
trial for example, as
related
to the bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998,
enraged the public tremendously. People
were affronted by the
jury which
voted
for an acquittal on 284 out of 285 counts, pronouncing
Ghailani
guilty solelyon
a single count for
“conspiring to destroy US property and buildings.” The
ruling was condemned
as
“a tragic wake-up call” to the Obama administration, the outcome
a “close call” that demonstrated “the danger of a fair trial,”
and the civilian courtroom deemed improper for a nation seeking
“vengeance.”

Distinctly
stimulating was an instance where the book expounded on the
legal interpretation of “imminent” threat of violent attack, in
the case posed by an Al Qaeda leader against the United States, and
in discussion of the legitimacy
of the drone
strike launched by the Obama administration that killed Anwar
al-Awlaki, an American citizen. On
the other hand, the
Latif and the Al-Adahi cases were
presented in the book as a point of departure to illustrate
an
interesting
common-law concept, the presumption
of regularity,
where “courts must presume that government officials have done
their jobs properly unless there is evidence to the contrary.”

The
Zacarias Moussaoui case effectively demonstrated the interplay of the
Sixth
Amendment's guarantee that a defendant be allowed to face his accuser
in court, asMoussaoui
was repeatedly denied the constitutional right by
the prosecutors. His
case was also testament to the complex
dynamic where “the power of prevention-minded investigators would
be weighed against the rights of defendants.” Jose
Padilla,
an American citizen and labeled an “enemy combatant,” he
was
but
one of the many
whisked away to “the Twilight Zone”—put into military custody,
outside the reach of the courts, and kept indefinitely without being
charged,
given
access to a lawyer,
or presented
with
any evidence.

Greenberg
is
indisputably an extremely skillful writer. A singularly powerful and
concise phrase went, “Adams's
Alien and Sedition Acts, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus,
Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans, Truman's attempt to
shut down a steel strike during the Korean War, Nixon's use of
surveillance against antiwar protestors—all are examples of actions
taken by presidents who chafed at the limitations imposed on their
power by the Constitution...”

Disclaimer:
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books
for this review.

One
L
is a ravishingly-written,
highly
entertaining, keenly
inspirational,
and somewhat anxiety-inducing narrative as
Turow trudges through the first-year curriculum at the prestigious
Harvard Law School, as one
of the 140 students of section two.

Future
or current law students, and keen readers, will savor the distinctly
fascinating pieces of legal knowledge and information shared in the
book. In Contracts, it was lectured that “most
of the greatest legal commentators of the past century have been
Contracts scholars: Williston, Corbin, Fuller, Llewellyn, Baldridge;”
in
terms of
“policy questions,” or
“deep-thought
issues,” an
example goes, “How
much discretion do we want judges to have in interpreting contracts?
Too much, and the judge, in essence, can compose the agreement
himself, rather than the parties. Too little, and the judge may have
to accept without question all kinds of perjury and injustice.”

The
author aptly furnished readers with fundamental information related
to his courses—Civil Procedure
“deals with the uniform set of rules courts use to conduct their
business in all noncriminal actions,” with
the second term devoted to close examination of the Federal Rules of
Civil Procedure; Criminal
Law, as taught by Bertram Mann, was “the
only course that would concentrate expressly on the relationship
between government and private citizens” where “much of our time
would be spent on the Model Penal Code;”
his
elective Law and Public Policy, taught by Guy Sternlieb, is “a
crash course in the working skills needed in upper-level positions in
government: analytic knowledge, methods of planning, management
techniques;” and
Legal
Methods is
a “small informal course on legal writing and other lawyering
skills.

Readers
will appreciate and enjoy morsels of wisdom as shared by Turow's
professors. Nicky Morris, professor of Civil Procedure, expounded the
importance of business law—“Even a criminal prosecutor, for
instance, could not handle many kinds of fraud and embezzlement cases
without knowing something about a corporation.”

The
book is most prominently enlivened by the author's colorful
commentary regarding his professors and courses. Turow vividly
painted his Contracts professor, the notorious Rudolph Perini, who
was known for brutal implementation of the Socratic method. Students
were “powerfully intimidated” by Perini's “routine
of heavygoing inquisitions;” Perini
subjected unprepared students to a look of “horrible
hatred,”
a voice “icy
with contempt,” and
an expression “mad
enough for murder.” The
author observed “the
exorbitance of Perini's manner [that]
seemed to release a sort of twisted energy.” And
perceived Perini's “flamboyant demonstrations,” “mocking
inquiries,” and “such obvious showmanship” as indicative of the
professor's misuse of the “classroom to live out some strange
vision of himself and that struck me as a misappropriation of a
teacher's power.”

In
Torts, the
author revealed
being overwhelmed, confused, and bewilderedby
William Zechman's
“goddamn questions,” “crazy hypos,” and
“elaborate hypothetical situations”—“If
battery is a mere offensive touching, is it battery to kiss a woman
good night, if she demurely says no? To push a man off a bridge
that's about to collapse? Or does consent somehow cure those wrongs?”
In
Property, as taught by Isaac Fowler, the author incredulously noted
that “clear[ly] nobody understood” Estates in Land, “a set of
medieval rules which still govern many aspects of the conveyance of
real estate.”

Turow's
recount of his
involvement in the
moot court competition, known as “Ames,” was
particularly hilarious. His team of two were assigned to a defamation
case. His Ames partner however ludicrously
and stubbornly insisted on sticking to his “half-assed theory,”
on proving his “screwball theory,” and on
championing
“an erratic legal theory of his own;” His partner made a
monumental
fool
of himself.

The
theme of competition is
inevitably
present
in this
memoir of one
enrolled in an Ivy League school. The author spoke uneasily of the
success, achievement, and competition hysteria that engulfed the
school—students who “seemed to make frighteningly penetrating
comments every time;” the prickly fear of “a group of silent,
all-knowing automatons hidden in the section;” the shocking and
absolutely unsettling finding that a section-mate “read Perini's
[Contracts] hornbook over the summer;” and
the
highly “disconcerting” discovery that “classmates
had been observed in the library reading law review articles,
sections of the treatises, the illustrative cases noted in the
casebooks.” In
another queer instance, a seemingly pompous
student named Harold Hochschild “had a policy of talking to no one
when he studied” as
he would
not tolerate being interrupted in the midst of such a “glorious
task.”

Turow
discerned
the incessant and
fanatical
obsession of fellow
students
to
make
the Harvard
Law Review;
being on the Review is compared
to
“being on the Supreme Court of law reviews.” He
detected the tremendously
“complicated personal politics of speaking in class,” of
the “disapproval,”
“amused disdain,” and “a kind of veiled animosity” directed
towards the regular talkers. He
even sensed the
Socratic method as
venturing beyond its accepted domain, and into perpetuating
“competition between professors and students.”

Regarding
the school
culture, Turow
boldly
proclaimed that “the whole university is suffused in such crazy
pretense, a kind of puritan faith in the divine specialness of the
place and its inhabitants,” and
referred to it as “upper-class
parochialism.” He
alluded to HLS
as a “legal pressure cooker;” remarked
on the “trappings
of success, Harvard Law School style,” and
even elaborately expressed the paramount
importance of grades and exams,
“superachievers
in an era of grade inflation, many people were despondent about Bs.”
He
recounted the infamous case of “The Incident,” the piece of
“student weaponry” of hissing, and even once declared
about
the “rumor mongering and mass paranoia that had lately been driving
me nuts.”

The
author certainly
underscored
the challenges of a legal education. He
impressed upon readers the formidably arduous
reviewing entailed
by a mere
two exams—a coverage of around “1,800
pages of cases, all of it dense reading and much of it worth
remembering,” in
addition to “over
500 pages of class notes, not to mention the hornbooks, outlines, and
briefs, many of which I was actively consulting.” The
author introduces another complicating factor—the
fact
that “even on second encounter, none of that material was instantly
comprehensible.”In
Criminal Law, a “complicated hypo” assignment involving
the Model Penal Code was said to result in “hours of excruciatingly
careful reading,” compounded by the tedious
process
to “reconcile
apparent contradictions.”

It
was relatively refreshing
to
read the author's
take
on the otherworldlinessand
peculiarity
of the legal language to
a first-year law student—it
seemed
like 'a
kind of Berlitz assault in “Legal,”'
a
language “full
of impossible French and Latin terms—assize, assumpsit, demurrer,
quare clausum fregit,” perplexing
words
like “estoppel
and replevin,”
or
complex terms
such as “quasi in rem jurisdiction, the parol evidence rule”, and
“promissory
estoppel.”

Turow
conveyed
the evidently magnified
embarrassments one
endured at such a reputable university. He
expressed feeling
“corrosively ashamed” for
contributing
an erroneous answer on
“attempted manslaughter” in a
class,
and
pointed out the enduring
shame which
resulted from
a disastrous Legal Methods oral argument—he fiercely tried “to
punch holes in my own best arguments,” and “fought back blindly.”

The
author contemplated certain effects
of law school education.
He once
commented to a friend, saying
that
“legal thinking is nasty,” as it “involved
being suspicious and distrustful,” it
encouraged looking for “loopholes and ambiguities,” and inferring
from silences. He
likened legal
thinking to
a “grimly literal, linear, step-by-step process of thought” that
breeds “rigidity,” and which threatens to seep into one's
interpersonal
life and
wreck havoc. He
communicatedthe
growing “cynicism,” where
fellow
students felt
they
were being “indoctrinated”—“being limited, harmed, by the
education, forced to substitute dry reason for emotion, to cultivate
opinions which were 'rational' but which had no roots in the
experience, the life they'd had before,” and
“being forced to identify with rules and social notions that they
didn't really agree with.”

Regarding
the author's psychological health,
it
was upsetting to learn of
his initial optimism and lightheartedness that
dwindled into a “grand
swell of pain and dread and confusion;” Hisinitial
harmless
jokes
such
as “maybe I was the dumbest guy around,”sadly
grew
into a full-fledged sense
that “I
was a ludicrous, miserable, unworthy failure.” He recognized
being
painfully aware of “the kind of downward spiral I seemed to be on,
these worsening screw-ups, this deepening hurt and fright.” The
recurring
theme of meeting “my enemy” in
the book also
eventually came to be defined
as
“that funny, indefinite collection of shadowy and unnerving
recognitions about myself.” In
an instance, an incredibly beautiful
metaphor was
used—1Ls
carry around “a lot of delicate psychological china that's bound to
be damaged somewhat with any abnormal shaking and strain.”

In
the afterword, the author interestingly mentioned
his
subsequent employment as a criminal prosecutor at
the United
States Attorney's Office in Chicago. He
was principally
involved in
public-corruption cases, where he prosecuted a judge, lawyers, and
even “helped prosecute the Attorney General of Illinois.”
Particularly piercing as
wellwas
Turow's contention that “law school is about training legal
scholars,” and teaching students “to think like law professors”
rather
than
to “think like lawyers.”

Disclaimer:
I am not affiliated to the publisher nor the author of the book. This
book review is the result of my personal reading and honest opinion.